Mental Health Foundation

How does your organisation contribute to preventing suicide and supporting those affected by it?

Prevention is at the heart of what we do, because the best way to deal with a crisis is to prevent it from happening in the first place. To achieve this, we work across the public mental health spectrum:

– We deliver and run ground-breaking evidence and practice-informed programmes, giving us the expertise to share what works.

– We help by offering straightforward information and tools for everyone.

– We produce authoritative reports and evidence used by government and the media.

– We influence policymakers and advocate for change.

What are your current priorities?

Thriving Communities resilience pilots

We are working with several local areas to implement whole community place-based approaches to improve local support, connectedness and resilience.

Research on suicide prevention

We are conducting several reviews and exploratory research to improve our understanding of how suicide prevention plans can best be designed and implemented.

What challenges are you currently facing?

To tackle mental health problems at their source and contribute to preventing suicide as a leading cause of death of young and middle-aged people, we need to achieve whole system change. Still, so little is commonly known about mental ill health and how to prevent it. We must make the same progress for the health of our minds that we have achieved for the health of our bodies. This means influencing change in communities and local areas, academic and research circles, media and press attitudes, local and central government.